Megathlin: Only soldiers really live war

The 15th of April found me flying to Washington, D.C., as the advance party for the second-ever Honor Flight originating in Savannah.

Honor Flights ferry World War II veterans to D.C. to see their new memorial, free of charge.

The flights are supported solely by contributions from patriotic American citizens and hometown businesses.

While standing in the aisle to get off the plane from Savannah to Atlanta, I noticed an elderly couple, waiting calmly in their seats. The husband, sitting next to the aisle, was wearing a baseball cap. The words, "Don't Tread on Me," were embroidered on the back. I figured he was a Tea Partier, headed to the big rally in D.C. that day.

But as I stood there beside him, I noticed a yellow pin clipped to his cap visor. "WW II" it read in very small letters.

I bent toward him and said, "Are you a WW II veteran?"

The people around us glanced toward him to watch him answer. He turned to me, raising faded green eyes to meet mine. His lower lids hung in little hammocks, pulling away from his eyes.

"Yes," he said, a smile starting to warm his seamed face.

I extended my hand. "Thank you for saving our country 70 years ago," I said.

He took my hand in his and pulled both to his chest.

"It was my pleasure," he said.

I told him that I was going to D.C. as the advance person for an Honor Flight from Savannah, that we were bringing 12 veterans to D.C. on Saturday. He said he had never been on an Honor Flight.

Time is short for him.

I try to remember, when I meet these frail old men, that they were once tough, lean boys and that they experienced some of the worst things a human being can bear. All for the sake of our country.

In my carry-on bag I was lugging a large book by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns, called "The War." It was written to accompany Ken Burns' documentary on WW II.

"Are you sure you want to carry that heavy book with you?" my husband asked disapprovingly as I was packing.

"Yes. I am going to carry it," I said.

I plan to ask our Honor Flight veterans to sign it, then, while they are exploring the memorial, I will take it to other veterans and ask them to sign the book, to write their units, where they served, the major battles they fought.

Eric Sevareid was a CBS radio correspondent during WW II. In the introduction to "The War," he is quoted as saying, "Only the soldier really lives the war. The journalist does not. He may share the soldier's outward life and dangers, but he cannot share his inner life, because the same moral compulsion does not bear upon him. The observer knows he has alternatives of action, the soldier knows he has none. ...

"War happens inside a man . . . and that is why, in a certain sense, you and your sons from the war will be forever strangers. If, by the miracle of art and genius, in later years two or three among them can open their hearts and the right words come, then perhaps we shall know a little of what it was like - and we shall know then that all the present speakers and writers hardly touched the story."'

I will try to remember those words when I open my book and place it into the trembling hands of a once young and courageous old man.